Loving Xobni

I read about Xobni a while back on TechCrunch. I was immediately intrigued but I wasn’t able to get my hands on it. I recently downloaded the beta and less than 48 hours later, I’m already huge fan! It’s a little buggy and I think it might be bogging Outlook down a bit, but it’s still worth it. I read somewhere this week that Bill Gates himself demo’d the damn thing – and it’s not even a Microsoft product. Holy crap is that a feather in the cap! After mentioning it to my pal Don Dodge he told me he knows the founders and spoke very highly of them, and he too uses the software. I invited a few colleagues to install it (I was limited to 5 invitations), and one of them, my sales manager, said he’s already totally diggin in.

Anyway, if you use Outlook I highly encourage you to check out Xobni. It will make you 30% more productive right out of the gates. One feature I like already is the “schedule time” feature. It grabs my schedule and sticks into the body of the email message. No longer do I have to manually decipher my availability in my calendar and then try to explain it in an email message. Instead, the message is automagically created and reads like this:

Hi Scott,

Here is my availability for the next few days.(All times are Eastern Standard Time, GMT-05:00.)

Wed March 05, 11am to 1:30pm, 2:30 to 4pm

Thu March 06, 9 to 11am, 11:30am +

Fri March 07, 9am to 2pm, 2:30pm +

Sat March 08, all day

Sun March 09, 9am to 3pm, 6pm +

Mon March 10, 2pm +

Best,

Ben

All that with a single click!

Again, it is a bit buggy, but it’s a beta. Either way, I’m freaking lovin this thing. If you are an Outlook user, especially a poweruser like yours truly, get Xobni!